Shopsmith Forums

dusty wrote:It sure would be nice if we forum members had reason to believe that our perceived needs were known by the engineering staff.

Like, if maybe one of them who MIGHT be lurking would speak up now and then.

However, except for an occasional input from Admin, I get no indication that anyone is listening.

I agree with Dusty. To me, there's no sense of wishing or waiting for something that IMHO is 1-2 years away. My unit of measurement on all of this is how fast Shopsmith can get their backorders filled, something which appears to be a growing concern. I'm not sure if the perceived upgrade is going to be worth the time and money involved. It is my hope that Shopsmith does not look at this whole Power-Pro upgrade as one last roll of the dice.
BPR

dusty wrote:It sure would be nice if we forum members had reason to believe that our perceived needs were known by the engineering staff.

Like, if maybe one of them who MIGHT be lurking would speak up now and then.

However, except for an occasional input from Admin, I get no indication that anyone is listening.

You can bet they read what we are saying. If I were in their shoes I would not participate in this forum. I would want to get a true read of what users want.
I work in retail and our store is just down the road from Senco. The workers in marketing can quote you everything said on Woodworking Forums but you never know they are there.

ryanbp01 wrote:I agree with Dusty. To me, there's no sense of wishing or waiting for something that IMHO is 1-2 years away. My unit of measurement on all of this is how fast Shopsmith can get their backorders filled, something which appears to be a growing concern. I'm not sure if the perceived upgrade is going to be worth the time and money involved. It is my hope that Shopsmith does not look at this whole Power-Pro upgrade as one last roll of the dice.
BPR

My perception(observed posts etc.) is that the BO situation though still present has improved. There seems to be less problem with small items. My own experience has been NO BO the last few times I placed an order(they did need to scrounge them off production).

I have observed that those individuals which have been the most vocal have been relative new comers(perhaps us patient types have been too acclimated to the problem).

I do not believe the effort being put into the 'Power Pro' headstock is a 'last roll of the dice'. A gamble for sure($$ will determine its success), but I do not think that much resources are being diverted from day to day operations.

Today's(and recent past) economic climate has created acquisition problems for everyone. It is unfortunate that some items are very difficult to obtain(vendors no longer able to perform necessary work).

dusty wrote:It sure would be nice if we forum members had reason to believe that our perceived needs were known by the engineering staff.

Like, if maybe one of them who MIGHT be lurking would speak up now and then.

However, except for an occasional input from Admin, I get no indication that anyone is listening.

I believe that some SS power that Be's, has stated in the past that they have a hands off policy here. For the most part.

Shopsmith isn't the only company with BO problems. I am presently experiencing a BO from Ford for a Vehicle Security Module for my 02 Superduty. Latest date is 1/19/10 for it. It has a component part shortage. So no matter how big you are, BOs can affect you.

Getting back to the original post - - I've come to think that the 10M RPM speed of the coming headstock would lend itself to edge routing and some slot/mortise making, but the inability of precise plunge movements would be the limiting factor.

The OPR will still be the better choice for efficient operations. That said - we have all done operations that are somewhat inefficient in order to get by with what was available.

With that thought in mind, some folks might be satisfied with using the headstock for some routing. After all, I found (a couple of years back) the present Mark V headstock will also do some routing of edges and slots with it's limited speed. Had I not known about the existence of the OPR, I would still be using the Mark V for many of these operations.

The SS shaper (with 3 cutters/head) works good at high speed of the existing headstock, smaller router bits, like ogees wok O.K. with small cuts and slow wood passes. Speeds of 10M RPM are optimal, but not absolutely necessary.

charlese wrote:Getting back to the original post - - I've come to think that the 10M RPM speed of the coming headstock would lend itself to edge routing and some slot/mortise making, but the inability of precise plunge movements would be the limiting factor.

The OPR will still be the better choice for efficient operations. That said - we have all done operations that are somewhat inefficient in order to get by with what was available.

With that thought in mind, some folks might be satisfied with using the headstock for some routing. After all, I found (a couple of years back) the present Mark V headstock will also do some routing of edges and slots with it's limited speed. Had I not known about the existence of the OPR, I would still be using the Mark V for many of these operations.

The SS shaper (with 3 cutters/head) works good at high speed of the existing headstock, smaller router bits, like ogees wok O.K. with small cuts and slow wood passes. Speeds of 10M RPM are optimal, but not absolutely necessary.

FWIW 10M = 10,000,000! 10,000 = 10K Ain't English(usage) Wunnerful!:rolleyes:

BTW It isn't the RPMs that matter, it is the tangential speed of the cutter edge and the number of bites/time. A cutting edge rotating with a 1" radius will be traveling 3x faster than one at 1/4" radius. A three bladed bit will bite 3x more often than a single blade bit. Put these two facts together and you will understand why a 'molder' head 'works better'(if you dare use one!). Routers appear to be safer since they operate so fast with small bits they do not (often) take too big a bite!

JPG40504 wrote:FWIW 10M = 10,000,000! 10,000 = 10K Ain't English(usage) Wunnerful!:rolleyes:

BTW It isn't the RPMs that matter, it is the tangential speed of the cutter edge and the number of bites/time. A cutting edge rotating with a 1" radius will be traveling 3x faster than one at 1/4" radius. A three bladed bit will bite 3x more often than a single blade bit. Put these two facts together and you will understand why a 'molder' head 'works better'(if you dare use one!). Routers appear to be safer since they operate so fast with small bits they do not (often) take too big a bite!

Guess my added years on the planet have left me to remember the way we used to do things. If I remember correctly, 'M' is the Roman numeral for 1,000. In Logging/Milling and Forestry, MBF is the standard accepted symbol to represent 1,000 board feet.

Never did understand where the 'K' came from to represent 1,000. Must be some metric abbreviation which when applied to the measuring system used in the U.S. makes no sense! Always thought it was funny when some bureaucrat announced we would be changing to the metric system. Hectares of land ownership?

charlese wrote:Guess my added years on the planet have left me to remember the way we used to do things. If I remember correctly, 'M' is the Roman numeral for 1,000. In Logging/Milling and Forestry, MBF is the standard accepted symbol to represent 1,000 board feet.

Never did understand where the 'K' came from to represent 1,000. Must be some metric abbreviation which when applied to the measuring system used in the U.S. makes no sense! Always thought it was funny when some bureaucrat announced we would be changing to the metric system. Hectares of land ownership?

The 'M' for 1000 was(is) quite common for several commodities(natural gas is still MCF)!

The 'scientific' community has established the more rigorous set of 'multipliers'. K is an abreviation for 'Kilo' and represents 1000. It is also a carry over from previous use. Current multipliers are powers of 10 to the third.

i.e. K = 1,000 M = 1,000,000 G = 1,000,000,000 T = 1,000,000,000,000 which are 10 to the third, sixth, ninth, twelth and stand for Kilo, Mega, Giga, Tera. Being defined by an international 'committee' they do not have a meaning in 'english'.

Adding to a possible confusion is the inverse powers of 10.

i.e. m = 1/1,000 µ = 1/1,000,000 n = 1/1,000,000,000 p = 1/1,000,000,000,000 and stand for milli, micro, nano, pico.

Notice the use of capital letters for 'positive' powers of ten and lower case letters for 'negative' powers of ten. Thus M = Mega and m = milli.

This 'community' is also responsible for defining the unit names for various units of measurements. Thus several years back 'Cycles Per Second' became 'Hertz'. Us old timers still slip up occasionally and refer to frequency as Kc/Mc for Kilo Hertz and Mega Hertz. CPS were named after a German scientist named Hertz.

Let's hope they leave 'RPM" alone!

Hi again,

Just catching up after a couple of days away.

While we don't know the upper limit yet the idea of 10,000 RPM does improve the chances of this being able to do a better job then what we now have. While the rpm is still no were near the upper end of what a router can turn it is not so bad. This is due the fact that several companies now make some bits that will do a lot to make this a better situation. Check here for what I'm talking about:
http://www.freudtools.com/t-quadra-cut.aspx

The problem that remains is just how much is shopsmith going to do to make this a better situation then it is now. A form of a quill lock is really needed or a way to lift/lower the table to perform the same thing. (This is just a FYI in case you have never seen something like this:
http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx ... 3053,43885
).

The use of air was mentioned, that might be nice or maybe the addition of a hydraulic system??? or maybe stepper motors for the quill feed???

And while we are at it the shaft can be make to rotate in either direction. What all can that be used for? I see some lathe work, shaper use, that sort of thing but is shopsmith thinking of returning to the mark 7 idea sometime soon??? Love to here some more thoughts on this too.

Ed